


Entanglement

by story_monger



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friendship, Garrison trio, Gen, Hawaiian Hunk (Voltron), Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: Pidge has a major revelation about the castle ship's technology and absolutely has to tell someone about it.In which Hunk and Pidge yell at one another about quantum entanglement and Lance simultaneously is confused by and loves his uber nerdy friends.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Love me some Garrison Trio. This takes place sometime around the beginning of season 1. While I loved season 2, I thought it had a dearth of Hunk and Pidge being smart cookies together, so I decided to make some of my own.

“Okay.” Lance slaps down his hand of homemade cards. “I officially think we forgot to make the three of spades.”

“What?” Hunk demands. “No we didn’t. I checked.”

“Well, then you checked wrong.” Lance gestures at the half finished game of King in the Corner sitting between them. “Because the three of spades is definitely missing.”

“That or you’re cheating,” Hunk says dryly.

“ _What_? No way!”

“Lance, you cheat all the time.”

“I cheated once. And you caught me!”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re not very good at cheating.” Hunk tosses his cards on top of Lance’s with a sigh. “All right, let’s count the deck. And if it’s still missing, I’m making you turn out your pockets.”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t—“

“Huuuuuunk!”

Pidge’s voice is faint but distinct, and it’s accompanied by a faint tamping of footsteps. Hunk and Lance share a wide-eyed glance.

“Pidge?” Hunk calls back. He half stands. “Is the workshop on fire again?”

Lance looks at him askance. “When was the workshop on f—“

“Hunk!” Pidge appears at the room’s entryway and doesn’t slow down. She barrels straight up to Hunk and slaps her hands on either side of his head, surprising him back into a sit.

“Hey, hey!” Lance snaps. “What’s the big idea?”

“Hunk,” Pidge pants. “Hunk, Hunk, Hunk.” She peers at him, eyes wide. “Do you know,” she says breathlessly, “what the castle uses for its internal and external communication system?”

Lance and Hunk both stare at her for a beat of silence.

“The…is this something I’m supposed to know?” Hunk asks.

“Hunk.” Pidge leans closer. “It uses quantum entanglement.”

Another beat of silence, except this time Lance watches with mild alarm as Hunk’s eyes widen too.

“You’re _shitting_ me,” Hunk whispers.

“Nope!” Pidge shakes her head, grinning like a wildcat. “Not shitting you even a little bit.”

“Quantum entanglement?” Hunk’s hands reach up to grip Pidge’s forearms. “Over how long a distance?”

“At their shortest, picometers. Longest, light years.

“ _Light years_?”

I think this is a _standard technology_ , Hunk. Everyone seems to use it.”

“Oh my god.” Hunk tugs Pidge’s hands from his face. “I gotta see this.”

“C’mon, I took apart one of the processors.” Pidge darts toward the room’s doorway, and Hunk hurries after.

“Uh, guys?” Lance scrambles to a stand. “Oy, wait up!” Hunk is laughing, and it’s the brightest sound Lance has heard from him since they arrived on the ship a month or two ago

“Quantum entanglement!” Hunk crows. “I can’t even—but how did they solve the Myong Paradox?”

“I dunno!” Pidge calls over her shoulder, and her grin is almost as wide as her face. “I realized what I was looking at and then I came to get you. We need to hunt down Coran and interrogate him.”

“Oh yeah, agreed.”

“Well don’t get _too_ enthusiastic about that,” Lance says, panting slightly and several paces behind Hunk. “We kind of need him to run the ship.”

Pidge skids to a halt and barrels into one of the central processor rooms. One of the many units has been pried open, and the faintly glowing innards are exposed. Lance eyes the setup warily.

“Is that going to explode?” he asks.

“What? No.” Pidge slides to a sit in front of the exposed unit, and Hunk kneels beside her as she picks up a datapad and holds it up for him to see. “So, this is one of the units that’s part of the castle’s internal communications array,” she says. “Which is how one part of the castle talks to the other parts.”

“Okay, okay,” Hunk murmurs, peering close at the datapad’s screen. Lance examines it over Hunk’s shoulder, but it looks like a lot of graphs and numbers and other nonsense. Hunk makes a triumphant sound and jabs at one graph. “That’s a Bell state,” he says, his voice high. “Right? Or am I making that up?”

“That was my first thought,” Pidge says.

“Okay, so this is cool,” Lance says. “But maybe—“

“Hang on, does the whole castle operate on quantum computing?” Hunk asks, snapping his attention to Pidge.

“Well why wouldn’t it?” Pidge says. “There’s literally no point in using binary if you have superdense coding. It’s astronomically more efficient.”

“Okay, we _have_ to find Coran.”

“Guys.” Lance reaches over Hunk’s shoulder and plucks the datapad from Hunk’s hands, holding it above his head.

“Hey!” Pidge snaps. “Give it!”

“Pretend I’m really stupid and explain why you guys are acting like you’re about to cream your pants,” Lance says. Hunk and Pidge glance at one another.

“Lance,” Hunk says, looking up. “You know about quantum entanglement, dude. We took the same physics classes.”

“Yeah, and I barely scraped through that hellscape while _you_ wouldn’t shut up about how easy it all was.” Hunk snorts softly and settles into a sit with his legs crossed.

“Fine,” he says. “Just give Pidge her datapad back before she tries scaling you to get it.”

Pidge shoots Hunk an unimpressed look as Lance returns the pad to her. “You’re still bitter about the time I scaled _you_ to steal back the welder,” she says.

“Pidge, once again, you’re implying I stole it in the first place,” Hunk says. He turns his attention to Lance. “Okay, so you remember how there’s itty bitty particles that make up everything? Like photons and quarks and all that?”

Lance slowly settles down on the floor beside them. “Yeah.”

“Basically, quantum entanglement is what we call it when two of these particles are, uh, linked somehow. Entangled. And basically, whatever you do to one particle, like say change its polarity, its twin will immediately have the same change happen to it no matter how far away it is. No matter if it’s on the other side of the _universe_. And obviously that has huge implications for communication and computer technology if you can figure out how to harness it correctly.”

“Einstein called it spooky action at a distance,” Pidge says from where she’s settled against the wall with the datapad in her lap. “Which is honestly a way cooler name.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” Hunk grins at Lance. “Any of this ring a bell?”

“I think so,” Lance says slowly. “We covered quantum stuff near the end of the semester, right? I was so lost by then.”

“Well, to be fair, Parra was sort of a terrible teacher,” Hunk says.

“You always say that just to make me feel better about almost failing her class,” Lance says, trying to not sound accusatory.

“Nah, he’s right,” Pidge says without looking up from her datapad. “I only did well in Parra’s class because my mom is a physicist.”

“Really?” Hunk turns toward Pidge slightly. “I didn’t know that.”

“Holy crow," Lance says. "That explains so much.”

“Like what?” Pidge asks, looking up.

“You.” Lance gestures. “You were absorbing super advanced physics theories as a fetus or something.”

Pidge grins. “I'll do you one better. My parents had me while they were both working on the Io probe.”

“Aw!” Hunk cries.

“Dios.” Lance covers his eyes dramatically. “I can’t believe it. You were fated to be a huge nerd from the very start. You had no chance, Pidge. Zero.”

“No, but that’s seriously cool,” Hunk says. “What does your mom study?”

Pidge’s grin sloughs off, and it’s hard to miss the pained expression that crosses her face. “This,” she says in a soft voice, gesturing at her datapad. She takes a deep breath. “Quantum information theory. She’s literally spent her whole career trying to figure out how to apply quantum entanglement to large-scale computer processing.” Pidge gives a sudden, hard laugh. “And now I have it. Right here. I’m living in a freaking magical alien castle that runs on it. And I can’t tell her about it.”

Lance and Hunk share a faintly alarmed glance. When Lance turns to Pidge again, he finds her trying to be sneaky about wiping roughly at her eyes with the heel of her palm. She’s failing miserably.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “I’m being stupid.”

“Oh my god, Pidge.” Lance scoots forward and kicks her lightly in the shin. “Shut up, honestly.” He jerks out of the way when Pidge tries to give him a retaliatory kick. Her eyes are damp, and that makes his own eyes start to prickle slightly; he’s always been a sympathetic crier. Being reminded of his own family back on Earth isn’t exactly helping. “You’re not being stupid,” he continues. “What, you think we don’t get it? Because we do.”

Pidge retreats, clutching the datapad like a safety blanket. She looks between Hunk and Lance. “I don’t even know…who do you guys have back home?” she asks.

“My grandmas,” Hunk sighs. “And my little sister. My uncle too; his farm is about a half hour from our house. And then an aunt and some cousins who live on the mainland.”

Pidge nods and looks at Lance expectantly. “A lot of people.” Lance’s mouth pulls up at one corner. “My mom and stepdad. My two older sisters, my little sister and brother. My dad and his girlfriend. Tons of aunts and uncles and cousins.” He lifts one shoulder. “A lot of people,” he repeats lamely.

“Huh,” Pidge says.

“Listen…” Hunk doesn’t finish the thought, opting instead to scoot over and settle in beside Pidge before throwing an arm over her shoulders. Pidge stiffens, but Lance knows from experience that Hunk’s hugs aren’t really anything you can fight against. After a moment she sags against his side, still clutching the datapad. He rubs her upper arm a few times and glances questioningly at Lance. Lance moves to Pidge’s other side, effectively making a Pidge sandwich. Pidge sniffs sharply once and lays the datapad flat on her lap.

“Well,” she says in a hard, bright voice. “I’d better collect all the data I can about the ship’s processing. Mom would kill me if I lived on a quantum computing ship and couldn’t tell her about how it worked.”

“Oh yeah, same here,” Lance says in a flat voice, jostling Pidge’s shoulder. “That’s all my folks can talk about. Quantum this, quantum that. Such a pain.” Pidge lets out a hard laugh and elbows Lance in the ribs, making him yelp. “Your elbows are pointy,” he accuses.

“All the better for shoving you with, my dear,” Pidge says. She starts tapping at the datapad and looks up at Hunk. “So, what I’m mainly confused about is which pathways they’re using.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a good point. Although I thought it looked a little like a Chinwe pathway.”

Pidge brightens. “Good catch,” she says.

“Uh, I thought number one priority was to go interrogate Coran?” Lance asks. Pidge and Hunk both look at him, and Hunk shrugs.

“We should try and figure out as much as we can on our own before bothering Coran,” he says in a very sensible voice.

“I’m comfy right now,” Pidge adds, a little less sensibly.

Lance lifts his eyebrows before he shrugs and closes his eyes, settling his head against the wall and crossing his arms.

“Whatever you guys want,” he says. “Wake me up when you’re done nerding out.” Beside him, he can feel Pidge’s side jump with a light laugh. He leans slightly into her, and she returns the favor. Her and Hunk’s voices start up again as they pore over Pidge’s datapad.

Lance feels something in his core slowly, quietly, start to unwind. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am not a physicist and know exactly jack shit about quantum entanglement besides the fact that it exists and seems pretty cool and people are in fact trying to use it for communication and computer purposes. Do not trust any science terminology in this fic; it's pretty much all based on what I got skimming through the Wiki page. Although Hunk's explanation of quantum entanglement should be correct in a very broad, simple sense.
> 
> Also a fun fact: Season 2 definitely had "quantum entanglement" included in the techno babble, so this is all canon-compliant.
> 
> Unrelated to any of that, I HC that Hunk was raised by his Hawaiian lesbian grandmas; one taught him how to cook and the other taught him how to fix absolutely anything.
> 
> I'm over on tumblr as [story-monger](http://story-monger.tumblr.com/)


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